Residual Forces

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (Sierra Club MN) has driven that last nail in the coffin for his relationship with the principled conservatives in the base, I think, with this little eco-stunt he pulled up in Ely with fringe environutters.

Governor Pawlenty, joined by Amy Klobuchar and explorer Will Steger, was in Ely Friday to discuss climate changes and how the state may have to deal with them.

So let’s get this straight. Pawlenty has been spending a lot of time in the last weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire trying to get his pal John McCain elected President, avoiding any contact with the SD25 special election that he decided to call. Maybe he should get a ‘Not in the Arena’ award too. And, when he does grace the state with his precence he is doing appearances with Democrat Amy Klobuchar and environutters helping solidify Al Gore’s war against prosperity.In the Strib’s version, you get to see the nuttiness straight up.

“With a doubling of [carbon dioxide], our forests will shift 200 to 400 miles northward,” University of Minnesota forest ecologist Lee Frelich told about 250 people who crowded into the auditorium at Vermilion Community College. “There would be a tsunami of grass from the west. Minnesota would end up without much forest at all.”

Isn’t global warming based on the theory that the Earth is turning into a green house where carbon dioxide is increasing? Don’t plants thrive on Carbon Dioxide, hence that’s why they have them in green houses? And that brings me back to what I was taught in school. Trees used to be all the craze for the Mother-huggers. They used to claim that if we just planted more trees…. everything was gonna be alright. But then it was prairie grasses that were considered, by scientists, as a better was to absorb the Carbon Dioxide and turn it into Oxygen to save the world. In the end, the entire global warming religion is based on destroying the American way of life.And if you didn’t know, Minnesota has had many faces over the years. We used to be buried under glaciers. Go figure, the Earth is changing, and will change no matter what we mere humans do.

The gathering was the first of several Pawlenty and Steger have agreed to host statewide, focusing mostly on the potential local effects of climate change. The Republican governor and the dog-sledding adventurer joined forces last fall on the issue, with Pawlenty declaring it “one of the most important issues of our time.”

That would be one of the biggest manufactured hoaxes simply to destroy our capitalist system and squash freedom under government regulation of our time.

Minnesota should seize the chance to benefit economically from solutions, Pawlenty said, creating “green collar” jobs.

That’s a pretty good example of why he has earned the name Governor Green Jeans with conservatives.

“Finally we’re waking up to the fact that global warming is real, as evidenced by the audience here today,” Steger told the gathering in his hometown of 3,500 people, where “eco-tourism” is a pillar of the economy.

(dumbfounded)

“We’ve brought the world everything from the Post-it note to the pacemaker,” Klobuchar said. “I see this as our next major challenge.”

She still can’t let that silly campaign line go…. a campaign line that helped defeat Pawlenty’s fellow Republican Mark Kennedy. I wonder if the same party leaders and operatives who were livid over Kennedy’s endorsement of Lieberman are upset over Pawlenty’s decision to cozy up to the liberal Democratic freshman Senator?  (or how Sen. Lieberman endorsed Pawlenty’s other friend, John McCain) But that would require them to not be hypocrites, hence, us conservatives are the problem. 

Ely wilderness outfitter Steve Piragis, citing the wind storm that mowed downed millions of trees in the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness a few years ago and has contributed to major forest fires, said the potential problems from climate change outweigh any potential advantages, such as longer summers.“Can we afford to say the blowdown wasn’t related to climate change?” Piragis said. “I don’t think so.”

That’s right. Pawlenty is joining with a guy who is blaming a storm on man. It can only lead one like me, with principles, to wonder just what the heck happened to the Governor. He is now virtually spitting in the face of his own party, and he has no regrets.

Pawlenty said that in the absence of strong national leadership, action by individual states, combined with multistate compacts, have the potential to become “de facto national policy.”

And that is where it gets very scary. Pawlenty doesn’t just believe the Al Gore hype, he isn’t just paying it lip service to be a populist. He is going to abuse his power to act on it through Government regulation and mandates.

Pawlenty said he still hopes, schedule permitting, to rendezvous with Steger during the explorer’s planned trip to the Canadian Arctic this spring to see the shrinking ice floes that demonstrate the effects of climate change in that region.

And here’s the test for Republicans at all levels. How much longer is it going to be before someone throws Pawlenty off the conservative island or at least fires a few rhetorical warning shots over his bow for abandoning the people who got him where he is? Seriously, this man will destroy the Republican party in Minnesota unless he is stopped. Unfortunately, the people in charge of the Republican party are…. are ….. well, I guess they are perfectly fine with it.